Penny Edgell

Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
Ph.D. 1995 University of Chicago
Room 1039 Social Sciences
Phone: 612-624-9828
Email: edgell@umn.edu
Website: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/edgell/home/

Interest Areas

Penny Edgell’s research provides a window into fundamental questions of the nature of religious institutions in the United States and how they have been affected by changing gender roles and family forms and increasing racial and ethnic pluralism, and how they help create ideological and social change. She is interested in how religious communities provide the cultural tools through which people frame, understand, and act meaningfully in contemporary American society.

She is beginning a new research project on how religious, scientific, and legal frameworks intersect to shape how people understand contemporary social issues (e.g. like genetic engineering, Intelligent Design, or GLBT adoption). Her work on the National Survey of Religion and Family Life focuses on the support that religious communities and networks provide for managing work and family life across different racial and socio-economic contexts. She is also working with colleagues Joseph Gerteis and Douglas Hartmann on the American Mosaic project, a study of how Americans make sense of racial, religious, and other forms of diversity in American life.

Selected Publications

"Religious Influences on Understandings of Racial Inequality in the United States," with Eric Tranby. 2007. Social Problems, 54(2):263-288.

"Religion and Work-Family Tradeoffs," with Samantha Ammons. 2007. Journal of Family Issues, 28(6):794-826.

"Beyond the Nuclear Family? Familism and Gender Ideology in Diverse Religious Communities," with Danielle Docka. 2007. Sociological Forum, 22(1):25-50.

"Atheists as ‘Other’: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society," with Joseph Gerteis and Douglas Hartmann. 2006. American Sociological Review, 72(2): 211-234.

Religion and Family in a Changing Society. 2005. Series in Cultural Sociology, DiMaggio, Lamont, Wuthnow, and Zelizer, series eds. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

ASA Sociology of Religion section Book Award

"In Rhetoric and Practice: Defining ‘The Good Family’ in Local Congregations." 2003. Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, Michele Dillon, ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.